Sweet Lips retires his column after 39 years

NEWS

by Seth Hemmelgarn

Bay Area Reporter
columnist Sweet Lips, right, visits with bar owner Marlena and B.A.R.
publisher Bob Ross, left, at the paper's 30th
anniversary party in April 2001 at the now-defunct Club Rendez-Vous.

The Bay Area Reporter
columnist who's been writing for the paper since it was
founded in 1971 is retiring his column today (Thursday, June 24).

Sweet Lips, a.k.a. Richard
Walters, and the late B.A.R. founding
publisher Bob Ross were roommates when Sweet Lips started his self-described
gossip column.

He wrote about people, bars, and
events in San Francisco's Polk and Tenderloin areas. He even worked in a few
bars.

But declining health has led him
to retire the column. He is now living in a Peninsula nursing home.

Sweet Lips, 87, said he started
the column to provide "publicity for other people and myself."

Coy Ellison, who along with his
partner, Sal Meza, has been helping with the column in recent years, said,
"You didn't have to have a title to get noticed" in the pieces, and
the column often bridged younger and older generations.

Sweet Lips, who wore a charm
bracelet with little red lips hanging from it to a recent lunch interview,
explained how he got his name.

"Because of my wonderful
disposition," he said, someone suggested his name should be "Sour
Lips." But others said it should be "Sweet Lips," and the name
stuck.

He recalled the way the Polk area
used to be decades ago, when gay bars were more prominent there. It was also
ground zero for the gay community before the Castro became the city's major
"gayborhood."

"Polk Street used to be a
good cruising area," said Sweet Lips. "Even I made out."

He doesn't seem to have lost the
"wonderful disposition" that led to his nickname.

Asked what the people in the Polk
neighborhood were like, Sweet Lips said, "Gay. Don't ask me silly
questions."

He did say, though, that San
Francisco was different.

People "liked to do things
together," he said. "If you had a party, you practically had the
whole town come."

Sweet Lips appears to still have
plenty of friends in San Francisco.

Before leaving for lunch, Ellison
gave Sweet Lips a black T-shirt, a gift from a local stripper.

Sweet Lips asked when he'd get a
performance and said, "I hope he wore it."

Ellison quoted Sweet Lips as
saying he was retiring the column because "When you've lived as long as I
have, and done as much as I have, it's time to hand it over to someone
else."

Steven Rasher, a longtime friend
of Sweet Lips, said the columnist has trouble concentrating, and can't see or
hear very well, but other than that, he's doing fine physically.

Thomas E. Horn, the B.A.R.
's current publisher, said Sweet Lips "has been an
institution not only to the B.A.R., but
in San Francisco, and part of the moral and ethical glue that has held our
community together" for decades.

"We will miss her enormously,
but we know that she will have a long and fruitful retirement," said Horn.

Toward the end of the lunchtime
interview, asked if he'd like people to know anything else, Sweet Lips quipped,
"I'm available."

Sweet Lips's final column is on
page 66. Cards and letters may be sent to Brookside Skilled Nursing Hospital,
2620 Flores Street, San Mateo, CA, 94403 attn: Richard Walters. Visitors also
are welcome. Brookside's phone number is (650) 349-2161.